<p>You’re right Kei-o-lei - there is a difference between ‘a list’ and ‘a visit’. I’ll try to be more distinct with my discussions with her. Its kind of like the cart before the horse…</p>
<p>We didn’t do a lot of school visiting in junior year, but we did go to a road show or two for colleges that came through town and set up a program at a local hotel. Actual visiting didn’t happen until end of summer right before the start of senior year. </p>
<p>Junior year is a stressful time, what with AP tests, SATs, etc. If she were to read descriptions of colleges in a book over the summer and come up with a long list of schools that sound interesting that could be whittled down over time, you’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Plus I’d also investigate the local state university that “everyone” at school goes to as a fallback position.</p>
<p>D1 and D2 are identical on paper, but polar opposites in personality. Both had great applicant credentials and in typical Type-A fashion, D1 drove herself, hour after hour, to hone essays and polish supplemental materials. She put dozens of hours into it, and on the deadline day for applications could hardly bring herself to hit the “Send” button for fear of having missed something minor. The whole spectacle was traumatizing for Type-B D2. She got in her mind that if that’s what applying to college was all about, she wanted to avoid it for as long as possible.</p>
<p>I finally broke the ice by offering to serve as clerical support, formatting all her text on the various online apps and helping to generate her list of ECs, service activities, etc., so that she could focus solely on the content. That helped get her through the writer’s block, but it didn’t really make her eager to go on visits. We managed to do a couple college visits on a family trip and then scheduled two visits in the city where her grandparents lived.</p>
<p>The bottom line - she got into her reach school, went there and has been happy as a clam. I guess the moral of my story would be to look for the angst-generator in the college visit / application process and try to address it as much as possible. If leaving home is the greatest concern for her, you might want to talk about the visits you’re planning to make and indicate things on or near each campus that you think would be fun for the two of you to do during those visits.</p>
<p>kitty8, you sound like a very caring mom! I see 2 areas that may be triggering some anxious thoughts in both your D and you:</p>
<p>1) This is a big separation coming up (in your 2-person household) where the 2 of you have been each other’s allies. As a good mom and adult, you are trying to ease her fears about leaving by getting involved in her college search, but your D may be a little unsure how to take all this attention focused on helping her out the door. There’s a conflict between leaving for college and leaving you–how can she be excited about one without feeling bad about the other. Smart and sensitive kids may feel the inner conflict more. Perhaps she’s just burying all that?</p>
<p>2) There are all kinds of fantasies (not all true for all people) about these last rituals before our babies leave the nest. I admire the parents and kids who have happy college trips together. What a nice way to share this next stage of our kids’ lives. And yet, there are many loving kids who are not as gung ho to move on and find these trips stressful. It’s kind of like shopping, some of us love spending hours in the stores, looking. Others hate it. I’d advise you to try not to put too many expectations on what these sorts of trips mean. It’s your relationship that is most important and if your D sees you are supportive, rather than with an agenda, it will make all the difference.</p>
<p>Best of luck.</p>
<p>I don’t know if it will help your daughter, but I think there is just as much value to finding out what you hate as what you love. So I think you can emphasize that the trip is not binding in any way. We usually combined our trips with visiting family or friends.</p>
<p>Has she at least looked at the requirements of some schools she might be interested in to make sure she will have taken the right test in time to apply? This is the only aspect of “looking at schools” that I insisted on.</p>
<p>I have one of those who didn’t want to do any visits/tours etc. until admitted. Stayed all 4 years at the same school. Worked out OK .</p>
<p>Frankly, I don’t get all this pussyfooting around the college visits. None of my kids were gung-ho on going. I just found a couple to start off with and told each of the kids that we were going to go look at some colleges. Once we did the first couple each of the kids were fine with the visits and started realizing what they liked and didn’t like and THEN they started suggesting ones they wanted to visit. I love(d) college visits and I think that rubbed off on the kids. We went with friends and their Mom’s and each of my kids has done one or two visits all on their own. With my youngest (HS junior) we’ve visited one college with his best friend, one with his girlfriend (and their parents) and three so far with his cousin and my SIL. They don’t have to be a big serious thing, just jump in -they’re fun! :)</p>
<p>My son is an IB student good at many subjects, so he was verrry reluctant to list majors that he was interested in. So for a few months we had a light hearted game listing majors he was NOT interested in.</p>
<p>The first ones cames slowly and humorously. NOT pottery. NOT creative dance. NOT Women’s Studies. NOT basket weaving. NOT music (a bit of a relief because he really is a great musician, but just wants to keep it fun). NOT theology. Then one day we added NOT history… ah progress (we should have known, since no IB history courses). His junior year english class instigated at NOT english statement.</p>
<p>Ah, finally he honed in on Engineering (like Mom and Dad) … or maybe Math or Physics. Ok, that made college hunting a bit easier :)</p>
<p>FWIW, my daughter refused to visit colleges either in spring of her junior year or the summer – AND she also wanted to visit a bunch of east coast colleges before applying. But she wanted to visit while school was in session-- so she insisted on taking 2 separate weeks off in the fall of her senior year to travel alone to visit. She was dead set on attending urban colleges, so the traveling alone part wasn’t all that hard – it was easy to get from place to place with public transit, and she was able to stay with friends in various cities in their dorm rooms. </p>
<p>I thought she was nuts, but she made all the arrangements with her teachers to take the time away from class - she even was able to pay for one of the trips on her own by winning a free round trip airfare in a contest. 
</p>
<p>My point is simply that I don’t think there’s any right answer-- nor is there a pressing need to visit when a kid is disinterested.</p>
<p>I also have a high school junior who isn’t that interested in college. He wants to go. Everything in his college search so far I have pushed him to do. Part of me just wants to not do anything until he brings it up but the other part of me doesn’t want it to be too late. He does very well in school and is involved in a number of activities there. I have no clue what is going on his mind.</p>
<p>thanks everyone, it has been helpful for me to hear and weigh all advice. I have decided at this point not to bring up college (its been a whole 4 days)! If she isn’t able to come up with some idea visits by April break I do have a plan B itinierary. I’ll clearly state my decisions on why I think certain schools are good to vist and we’ll take it from there. I have faith that she will come up with some ideas and I have compassion because she is dealing with fear and change. I checked common data sets of some schools she may like and she is on target with course selections/grades/sat/sat II’s etc. I think it will be just timing now… and patience.</p>
<p>As a current senior who was a exactly the same way last year, i think instead of planning college trips with just you and your daughter, take advantage of her friends that are talking constantly about colleges. Arrange for her to go on trips with her friends, or her friends with you.</p>
<p>I second the idea of getting a friend involved. Another mom and I took our boys on a driving trip down the coast of California and had a blast. The boys refused to go until we suggested a day at what we started calling U.C. Magic Mountain. Having a friend along made the trip more fun for both boys and de-stressed the whole experience.</p>
<p>Summer is plenty soon enough to start looking at colleges. When my older was a junior I injured my back and wasn’t able to sit on an airplane until the summer. We managed to fit in most of the schools she wanted to see - enough for her to get a feeling of what she liked and didn’t like in a college. She included a couple of colleges on her list that we hadn’t seen but that she thought she would like well enough to make them worth applying to, figuring that she could see them if she got in. We also flew down to SoCal for a weekend in the fall to see a couple more schools - it’s still not too late at that point.</p>
<p>Our college trips involved my reluctant D and her bff/twin sister so yes, I sort of took that part for granted but do agree that in absence of a bf/twin, taking a buddy is just one more way of giving her control and increasing the enjoyment factor.</p>
<p>I took my D on several trips her junior year. Now that she is at the end of her senior year, her tastes are completely different than they were last year. On one hand it is good for her to have seen different schools and environments for comparative purposes; on the other hand I feel like we wasted a lot of time and money. </p>
<p>S is a junior and has no interest in looking at schools. I may swing him through a few campuses over the summer and do a few official visits in the fall.</p>
<p>I think it is MUCH better to visit campuses when the schools are in session - summer tends to have a very different vibe.</p>
<p>I think the poster who brought up the issues of anxiety about leaving home was right on. And as a mom who fully admits to over-compulsively planning D2’s college-scouting trips, I don’t think these trips are necessary. Our D1 adamantly refused to look at schools. My husband had so been looking forward to taking her on a college tour (I would have loved it, too). But that was our fantasy, not hers, and we had to let it go. She did not want to be more than an hour away from home, she found the one school she wanted on her own, and refused to consider anyplace else. She got in early, and is now a happy sophomore there. As long as your D is a good student, she WILL find a good home!</p>
<p>D2 is the opposite, has known she wanted to go east since she was little (we’re Californians), and she has no separation issues and likes adventure, so I’m getting to have the fun scouting trips with her. I would have been sad if she was just like her sister and refused to look anywhere, but I would have lived. It’s about what they need/want, not what we need. As long as they are good students and find a suitable home that the family can afford, we have to let go of our agendas!</p>
<p>But how do they know what they want unless they see what’s out there?? I know kids that put their foot down about visiting and ended up very unhappy freshman because they just didn’t feel like looking around to find a better fit. </p>
<p>Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal to go check out some colleges because I live on the East Coast where there are literally dozens of colleges within an hours drive and hundreds within a days drive. A college visit takes 3 hours max. Seems like a good time investment to me.</p>
<p>I think there’s a balance between visiting two dozen colleges and doing two. I met a Mom once who told her kids that they needed to pick out four colleges to visit and she chose one as well.</p>